Fianna Fail plan pension reform

A Fianna Fail policy committee has called for defined benefit pensions to be wound down

FIANNA Fail is considering phasing out guaranteed pension payments for state employees and investing their future pension contributions on the open market.

A Fianna Fail policy committee has called for defined benefit (DB) pensions to be wound down and replaced with defined contribution (DC) schemes, in order to remove the €87 billion liability for public service pensions from the exchequer.

Darragh O’Brien, chairman of the party’s finance and public service reform committee, has proposed that newly hired nurses, teachers, gardai and civil servants should start on the same pension terms as most private-sector workers — DC schemes — where the value of the final pension depends on where their monthly contributions are invested and how they perform.

O’Brien’s committee has also proposed that more than 300,000 existing public-sector workers move to hybrid pension schemes — a mix of DB and DC. “Defined benefit pensions are a major burden on the exchequer and they